Amid chaos, volunteers wed

Posted: Sunday, September 16, 2001

Yvette BlackmanAssociated Press Writer

NEW YORK - The couple had worked 36 hours at a stretch, putting together a workable list of the missing after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Red Cross volunteers, they helped an effort that logged more than 62,000 worried phone calls.

On Friday, Paul MacIntosh and Monique Fernandez Yaptenco took a break and got married.

The couple exchanged vows in a crowded hallway at a public TV station where the pledge-drive phone banks were converted for the missing persons effort. Watching in a hush were 100 or so new friends, mostly volunteers who had been strangers 48 hours earlier.

Like so many others, the couple's plans were shattered by Tuesday's attacks.

MacIntosh, a software engineer from Thornton, N.H., and Yaptenco, a Philippines-born New Yorker who works as a secretary at the United Nations, intended to marry Friday at City Hall before a few relatives. They had planned to visit the New York Aquarium before a honeymoon kayaking in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Instead, amid a city in chaos, they worked for a day-and-a-half to build a computer database. While 200 others answered phones, they logged into the computer precious bits of information on missing victims - by Friday's count more than 4,700 - from handwritten forms.

When the couple left reluctantly Thursday evening to get some rest, their new friends stepped in. A ceremony. A bakery (found an hour and half before) donated the four-tiered vanilla cake. The bouquet was made of bright pink roses and babies breath.